‘Cuckoo’: Hunter Schafer Is the Next Great Scream Queen
One of the most enticing elements of a new horror film is watching the lead actor go through hell. It sounds harsh, but horror is a genre that provides opportunities for jaw-dropping performances, pushing actors to their limits as their characters experience things most of us could never fathom. That’s not something Hunter Schafer, star of Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo, uses to her advantage.
In just one horror performance, Schafer shows the potential to become a legendary scream queen alongside legends Jamie Lee Curtis and Barbara Steele and newcomers Maika Monroe and Mia Goth. Her performance in Cuckoo is so good she might have earned the ultimate Scream Queen title in one role.
Schafer plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old struggling with her family’s move from the US to the Bavarian Alps in Germany, where her father, stepfather, and younger stepsister have come to work on the development of a resort run by Herr König (Dan Stevens). As this is a horror movie, things are a lot weirder than that—a strange, powerful hooded woman starts following and attacking Gretchen, but nobody seems to believe her.